Become a Fospice Parent

Fospice—End-of-Life Hospice Care

Fospice supports shelter animals diagnosed with a life-limiting, non-contagious illness. While these animals are not suffering, their medical condition and poor prognosis prevents the San Francisco SPCA from seeking adoptive homes. Many other shelters would euthanize them.

Are you willing to open your heart to an animal that might only have a few months to live, but we’re not ready to give up on? These animals may need fluids, daily monitoring and that little extra TLC that one can only give in a home environment. To learn more, email foster@sfspca.org. Read our Fospice Manual (1MB PDF).

What It Takes

We need people who are willing to open their hearts and homes to shelter animals with a life-limiting terminal illness. Fospice parents offer homeless animals the opportunity to live out their lives in a loving home. They need to be able to get the animal to us within 30 minutes, if necessary. And they need to be comfortable working with us to determine the animal’s quality of life and when the time has come to say goodbye. We provide food, medications and 24-hour support. This is the chance to give a shelter animal the greatest gift of all—a loving home at the end of its life.

If you’re an animal lover interested in providing love, nourishment and heaps of TLC to animals at their end of life, email foster@sfspca.org with questions. You can download your foster care volunteer paperwork here: